


Harlequinade

by WET_NOODLES



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: A fuckign medieval dildo. There I said it., Apocalyptic Veteran Sex Failures, Bad Dirty Talk, F/F, Fics to be wiped in the event of my untimely death., Fire Emblem Kink Meme, Kink Negotiation, Light Dom/sub, Severa's vicious self-kinkshaming cycle, Shameful smut, Spanking, The Future Past Timeline, a scullery maid's SEXY SEX TIPS FOR SEXY SEX
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-07-14 10:07:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7166831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WET_NOODLES/pseuds/WET_NOODLES
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m holding you to your promise to treat yourself with a bit more kindness. And,” she said, “if there’s anything that makes you happy, then I would hear it. No matter how outlandish it may seem to you, I… cherish these opportunities to discover more about each other.”</p><p>Or: the epic saga of the Exalt and her consort failing miserably at sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> [Prompt](http://fe-kink-meme.tumblr.com/post/130035152122/lucinasevera-after-countless-nights-of-tender) from the FE kink meme on tumblr: "After countless nights of tender, careful love making, Severa has a confession: she wants to be utterly dominated by Lucina, and get it hard and rough from her princess." 
> 
> I wrote this with the equally bloated canon of [Duty (Ablaze)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124482) in mind, but literally the only context you need is that Sev + Luci are engaged, and that the whole end-of-the-world biz has left them fuckin Stunted.

“ _There’s a fine wench. My_ _little pet_ _, my pretty kitten.”_

 _Duke_ _B_ _elsys raised my bum with a smarting blow,_ _tyrannical in his passions, while I bore my cunny to_ _him_ _heaving and voracious like a low beastwife in coupling. My petticoat fell all round my roseate breasts which lurched like great milky pendulums as I relented to the Duke’s merciless lunge again and again, each conten_ _t_ _ed sigh and stifled gasp of protest serving only to arouse his fervor._

“ _Oh, oh! Milord, but I can hardly bear it!”_

 _The Duke r_ _eturned_ _blow after blow_ _for each imploring cry._

“ _Oh!” Smack. “Oh please, milord!” A smack freshly delivered_ _anon_ _._

“You up?”

Severa clapped the book shut at Brady’s drumbeat of a knock, stuffing it under her covers before dropping her voice to her groggiest croak: “’M'up now.”

“Hey, sorry to wake ya, but you’ve got just one more day of this stuff.” Brady cracked the door open and knelt to retrieve the tray of tarnished silver that he’d set on the floor. One of Brady’s famous sickdishes—she’d smelled it before she could see it.

“No, I was out for a while. Thanks.”

She brought the teacup to her face and suppressed a grimace. Definitely didn’t miss this from the war.

“Yeah, yeah, it smells like pegasus pat.” Brady pulled up the bedside stool, lowering into his palm-on-knees slouch. “I woulda brought some sugar, but I figured there’s enough lumps between the two of us.”

“I’m just admiring the, uh…” She squinted at the porcelain’s vaguely heart-shaped blotches. “… The details on this fluting!”

“Oh yeah? Hate that set. Ma loved it. No coincidence I painted it as a kid.”

Better than the old waterskins they carried on the march, Severa thought to herself before knocking back the broth. Brady had it cooled the way she liked, so it went down like dirt without scalding her tongue.

“Guess I oughta catch you up,” he said as Severa picked out an acidic tincture. “Nah prayed for you. So did I, but she put in a good word to the big dragon lady up in the sky.”

Severa flushed behind her flask and ran a hand through her unbound hair, blocking Brady out of her periphery and mumbling, “You didn’t _have_ to.”

Noire’s charm for swift recovery rested warm and heavy against the skin of her chest. Maybe her fever had reduced her to even more of a dewy-eyed weakling—or the maybe war had overcast a fondness for her friends that her abrasiveness could no longer mask.

“Yeah, well…” Brady scratched the back of his head. “Oh yeah. Runner flew by today, said the Exalt’s due back tomorrow evening.”

Severa straightened against the headboard.

“Tomorrow?!”

“Yeah, there an echo in—hey, _hey,_ get your happy ass back in bed!”

Brady stood to meet her, pushing down on her shoulders with all the might and vigor of a sack of dead puppies.

“You can’t just boss me around like that!” Severa shrugged Brady off with a huff. “I could, uh, order a mob of servants dump water on you while you’re sleeping, or something!”

“Doctor’s orders, princess. Lucina’d have my hide if she caught you up and about.”

“It’s been a whole week! The place has got to be in shambles by now.”

Despite her insistence, she didn’t want to bruise her friend with a dainty jostle, so she dropped back into the mattress.

“Ugh, whatever.” Never mind that her hair was a mess, that she smelled like a chamberpot, that she had the healthy glow of a Risen, that she felt fat and sweaty and had to vomit in a pan under the bed. “Just tell my fiancee I died.”

For effect, she tossed her head to the side like Owain during one of his performances of his production, _Eighty Six Heroic Death Throes and a Resur_ _r_ _ection_ , before an audience of baffled courtiers. Brady only sighed and leaned over the bed.

“Yeah, yeah, tell me something I haven’t heard. Here, gimme your hand.”

Severa unfolded an arm without opening her eyes, feeling uncomfortably conscious of her pulse as Brady pushed two fingers against her wrist. He released her, and then the warm skin of his palm enveloped her forehead.

“Not bad, but give it another night, yeah? Get it all out of your system. I’ll even change out the sickpan for ya.”

At Severa’s groan, he clicked his tongue.

“It ain’t nothing I haven’t seen before, so you just cool your cucumbers.”

“My cucumbers can burn in hell for all I care,” she said, her voice a bit muffled through her pillow.

She responded to the hand mussing her hair with an unintelligible grumble, and then, when she was sure he had left, returned to her book—a piece of contraband she’d confiscated from one of the kitchen staff.

_Duke Belsys drew the butt of his whip up and about the mouth of my cunny with a most lusty sneer._

“ _You shall to me like a beastman surrenders himself wholly to his Master,” he said, “For that is his place, and so it shall be yours.”_

Most of the story followed in this tack—stupid in some places, inexplicably political in others, with no likable character in sight and a transparent compulsion to have every new “love” scene outdo the one that preceded it. Severa was impervious to these appeals to shock value, disgust for herself notwithstanding when she used some of the scenarios as an imaginative aid.

Recast, of course. And with more chemistry than whatever existed between the Duke and his Bygnonian Bawd. And only as a thought exercise. And not something she intended Lucina to know about, ever.

She’d wondered sometime before, though, what it would feel like to be struck, during—during. To be bound to a bedpost like an imprisoned concubine, heaving breasts spilled over her bodice while fingers toyed idly at the exposed skin. To be stood and pushed and arranged like a doll, to be handled like a cow or unbroken mare, a slave to her own passions, to grind down helplessly onto a pillow while Lucina watched and withheld her touch until the very last moment, sparing Severa from her own ignoble, wretched desires.

Severa groaned and rolled onto her stomach, leaving one arm pinned under her body before she found the angle too frustrating, lifting her hips in the air. Her covers clung to the sweat on her back and her shape would likely leave nothing to an intruding onlooker’s imagination should they happen to walk in on her.

 _Wow, what a weird thought._ She stopped herself and reemerged from the covers, as hot and foul as when she’d started, but at least somewhat inhibited. Lucina’s absence—or Severa’s own fever—must have been doing strange things to her. Worst of all, she thought, she had no one to consult like those women at the bathhouse. Kjelle would find it trivial, Nah was better left not knowing, and Cynthia would be _beyond_ useless, which left her with one other… oh, gods.

An idea formed as soon as the name entered her mind—one just stupid enough to work.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Brady said the charm worked wonders, but I think he was just being nice.” Noire smiled down at her hands, twining in her lap like she was constantly rubbing a lotion over them. “You weren’t a regular at the infirmary tent… I would know.”

“Actually, that’s the exact reason I called you up here!” A cold bath and a change of clothes did wonders for Severa’s self-esteem, and Brady had granted her a garden walk on her last day of bedrest. They huddled side-by-side, hidden under the courtyard’s trellised shadows, and for once Severa felt like a normal lady of the court.

“It worked so well, and I never properly thanked you. So, um, I’d give you a hug, but it still might be a bad idea, so I figured I’d get you something instead.” She pulled the bracelet from her robe pocket, a string of dark green, stormy jasper. “Well, one of the servants actually went out and physically bought it, but the order was mine!”

“Oh, Severa…” Noire ran her thumb over a stone, and made eye-contact for a fleeting moment. “This is so beautiful, I don’t even know if I can accept it. You didn’t need to get me anything—the charm was a favor for an old friend.”

“Ugh, just accept the gift before you give this sickly peeress a case of the vapors.”  
“A-alright, alright!” Noire chuckle was edged with just a touch of nervousness. “You always knew how to get your way. I kind of envy it…”

“Trust me, you shouldn’t. Anyway, now that we’re even again, I can ask you my favor!”

Noire lifted her head at this, concern etched clear on her face.

“I-is it another charm?”

“Yes! Well, maybe?” Severa had spent the last hour running this part through her head, but no way she ordered the thoughts would’ve sounded anything but weird. “I was just wondering if there was an enchantment for… well…”

She listened hard for the presence of other garden loiterers before continuing.

“For ‘darker thoughts’.”

To Noire’s credit, if she was at all shocked or surprised or disgusted, she didn’t let it show.

“What kind of thoughts, Severa? If-if you’re comfortable sharing, that is…”

“Uhh…”

This was the part where she would run up against a wall. Maybe Noire was weird enough to take her total honesty in stride, but— _look at her, Severa. How could you traumatize dear, sweet, precious,_ _innocent, guileless_ _Noire?_

“Darker… impulses. To do stuff I probably shouldn’t.”

Noire looked deep in thought for a moment, pressing an amulet to her lips.

“There are enchantments… that can calm you,” she started, “But maybe it’d help if I told you what I did, when I had a lot of anger, and nothing I tried would make it go away.”

She reached up to stroke the bud of a flowering vine, her smile a bit sad. This was getting dangerously personal in ways Severa never asked for.

“Well, it’s kind of like bloodletting,” Noire said. “I had all these feelings bottled up inside me, and the only place they could go was… out. But I didn’t want to hurt anyone! So I thought maybe I should have a time and a place for those feelings to happen, and that maybe… I could control them, that way.”

Well. Severa’s predicament seemed a lot more trifling now that they were having this conversation.

“And it worked?” she said. “I mean, you seem so much happier now, that I figured it was just your charms, or the end of all that fighting.”

“They didn’t hurt,” giggled Noire. “But sometimes the best way to conquer a part of you is to accept it. At least, that’s what worked for me. But you’re smart, and strong, and I’m really proud of you! And I know you’ll be just fine, like you always h—um, are you crying?”

“It’s allergies!” Severa insisted, blotting her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. “I always get all sniffly under these plants, and I’ve been bedridden for a week, and I’m really proud of you too, okay?!”

It didn’t do much for her own problems, but Severa was happy to at least get a hug out of it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“So, um, I read this book.” Severa adjusted her stance in the mirror—too guilty-looking. Still a hog in a nightgown. She would also have to pray for the immortal soul of whoever might walk in on her, because she wasn’t sure either of them would leave the room alive.

“So I found some of the kitchen staff all huddled around this book, and I did _not_ yell at them for slacking off on the job, but of course I had to confiscate it, and it’s not like I had much else to do in bed with you g—oh Gods, not like _that_ , I just mean….”

Even against her own reflection, Severa was making a mess out of this.

“It’s ten kinds of stupid and I hate it, but it got me thinking, maybe I… ha, it sounds ridiculous, when I try to say it out loud.”

She caught her own self-conscious grin in the mirror, and banished it with a frown.

“It’s almost… vulgar, but I kind of like it? Gods, you must think I’m a freak.”

Her hands followed the same path as usual for whenever she stood before a mirror, pinching her stomach and lifting her breasts, looking over herself in equal parts pride and dissatisfaction. She smoothed a palm up the gossamer front of her gown, catching a nail against the peak of a nipple. Closing her eyes, she could hear Lucina’s firm, quiet commands as clear as if she’d been standing right beside her— _“_ _Open your eyes, love._ _I want you to see yourself._ _”_ She could feel the hands creep down to her waist, feel the grip around the flesh of her thighs, the cool air between her legs as she hitched the skirt of her gown, the lips at the nape of her neck—

“Da dada-da!”

Severa dropped her arms to her sides and wished either she or Cynthia or both or everyone would drop dead just then.

“The cavalry has returned!” Cynthia cleared the chamber floor between them with a few galloping skips and a leaping embrace. “… Ohmygods, you don’t have a fever still, do you?”

Severa finally found her words. “Gods, do you ever knock?!”

“Oh, there’s our Severa! Welcome back, buddy!”

“Don’t you 'buddy’ me.”  Severa pushed her face away like the snout of a nosy pegasus, straightening her gown. Cynthia carried the reek of the trail with her, shockingly alien after a week’s bedrest—hot leather, sweaty armpits, ichor-lined nailbeds, and the gravesoil sweetness of Risen. It always filled Severa with a bitter nostalgia, though she couldn’t say she missed the starvation, or the ever-present threat of impending doom.

Severa sighed, and gave Cynthia’s hair a grudging muss.

“When did you get back?” she asked.

“Um, just now, silly! What kind of friend would I be to leave my eleventh favorite person in the lurch? Ow, hey!”

Cynthia clapped her hand over the pigtail Severa had given a tug, and then pouted.

“… Lucina was gonna see you too,” she continued, rubbing her scalp gingerly. “But some baron or whatever he was got to her first? Because some villagers were trespassing in his woods to kill Risen? Who’ve been slaughtering their livestock? And so now Lucina’s stuck listening to some bore go on and on about poachers and foresters and has to pretend she cares about his problems?”

Cynthia had been rocking from heel to toe all the while, fidgeting her hands behind her back like she did whenever she was deep in thought.  
“I don’t know, Severa. I know the Exalt has to be diplomatic about this kind of stuff, but people like that really get my griffon! We’ll probably send our own men to clear out the Risen, but I’d rather just tell him where to stick it!”

“Cynthia, close the door.”

“What?”

But Severa was already sifting through her wardrobe, tossing a wadded pair of leggings to the bed.

“I’m going down to greet this very important visitor! That’s part of my job now, remember?”

“Oh no, wait! I forgot, I was supposed to tell you something!” After a beat of indecision, Cynthia slammed the door shut and then threw herself between Severa and her wardrobe.

“Lucina said that she’ll bring your dinner personally, and that she doesn’t want to aggravate your condition from going off on some ponce, and I think I wasn’t supposed to say that second part.”

Cynthia inhaled.

“So can you pretty please just humor us tonight? We were so worried about you on the road—”

“Okay, back up. First off, are you implying I have a temper issue?!”

“You don’t have to yell at me!”

“Second off, _you_ were worried? You were off… gallivanting with infernal warriors of the undead while I wasted away like an invalid, and _I_ was the one worrying you?!”

“Yeah! You were! Wanna know why?” Cynthia’s fists were clenched as she poised like a comically tiny gamecock, and Severa’s mind went to the time Cynthia picked a barfight with some lech who’d been haranguing one of the new recruits.

“Because we love you, and worrying about you’s our job even when you’re acting like a big fat jerk! And if I have to kill you with kindness until you understand, then… then I will!”

“Don’t you dare—ack!”

Another one of Cynthia’s legendary hugs crushed the protest out of her, and only in her fading peripheral vision did she see the shape of her fiancee appear in the doorway. Lucina set her tray on the floor, and Cynthia did the same with her quarry, or at least enough so that Severa’s feet touched ground. (How Cynthia could lift anyone at her height was beyond Severa.)

“I…” Lucina looked from one to the other, taking in the sight of them. “I’m not interrupting anything am I?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Ugh, I must look like such a child.”

Severa paused in her own griping long enough to lean forward with her handkerchief and dab a smear of broth from the corner of Lucina’s mouth.

“Those honors go to the good Baron Valere, for bringing such pressing matters as innocent trespassers to our doorstep.” Lucina’s eyes fell to the tray set over the bed between them, the contents a good deal easier to stomach than Brady’s sickdishes.

“…You have every reason to be cross with me,” Lucina said after a thoughtful swallow. “It pained me to leave you in your state, and yet it hadn’t occurred to me that I could simply postpone the visit.”

“What, and snub all those diplomats? Jeeze, don’t start another war on my account.” Severa rolled her eyes, but couldn’t huff away the heat that rose to her face. “Still, the sentiment’s sweet, I guess…and you’re here now, right? No more outings without the commander of your personal guard.”

“You’re much more than a guard to me.”

There was that disarming sincerity again—and after a week’s absence of it, Severa’s usual barbed responses had been forgotten.

“Even before our courtship, you were a treasured friend.”

“Okay, okay! I guess I should’ve known you’d get all mushy on me.” Hiding behind her bangs, she passed Lucina a toothy grin. “But if this is how it’s gonna be, then I’m going all out too! Uh…”

 _I’ve been thinking about you, every night, every day,_ _even_ _during Noire’s handicraft lessons, and I’ve been terrified that our court harbors a secret mindreader. And if you’re reading mine_ _right_ _now, I’m sorry._ Okay, too weird.

“I missed you,” she admitted at length, turning her face away. “It’s kind of ridiculous how much I missed you, for how short a time we were apart. I guess when you’re lying in bed all day, you spend a lot of time with your own thoughts.”

Lucina’s smile was wry.

“I have no such excuse,” she said. “You occupied my thoughts day and night. I must have made an imbecile of myself to the councilmen, as I felt your absence sorely the entire time. And…” She looked up, eyes clear and plaintive in a way that was so foreign to the self-assured Exalt. “And I wanted to kiss you again, but I was told that this is your first meal of substance in quite some time, so I thought you might rather savor it—”

In a rare burst of initiative, Severa leaned over the tray to cup her cheek; the fine hairs on the back of her neck goosed as Lucina’s hand settled there, and suddenly she wished the decadent meal between them would give them a little privacy.  

Lucina broke the short kiss, her breathing labored: “Every night I would think back to these moments, in the privacy of my tent.”

Peering through her lashes, Severa was met with her fiancee’s unwavering gaze. The hand around the nape of her neck curled inwards, as though Severa might disappear at any moment.

“None of it compares to having you in the flesh.”

The heat in the room thickened, congealed around them like hot custard, and Severa had to avert her eyes.

“You’re unbelievable,” she mumbled. “I-I mean. It’s not like I’ve been any better, but still.”

“Hm?”

A thumb stroked down from behind her ear to the curve of her jaw, a touch so crushingly tender that Severa felt unworthy of it.

“I mean, saying it outright. About getting lonely and… handling it. Gods, I’m the one making an idiot out of myself here, can’t you just shut me up?”

Lucina looked thoughtful for a moment, before saying, “I think I may do the very opposite.”

The din of silver clattering to the floor would have put Severa in a panic, had Lucina not taken its place, kneeling upright and pressing into Severa with her full weight. Severa sank back into the sheets, propped on one elbow, while her other hand found Lucina’s chest; protective undershirt padding thwarted her vulgar designs. In her nightgown, no such barrier existed for herself, and every part of her opened itself to the lightest of touches. After some ineffectual pawing on Severa’s part, Lucina seemed to read her frustration, pulling away to remove her tunic and undershirt.

Severa willed the image to sear into her memory: the flat planes of her torso, the latticework of scar tissue, the lines of her hipbones disappearing into worn breeches. Severa pitched forward to plant a kiss on her taut navel, urged on by the hand that came to rest on her crown, and then it struck her how easy it would be for Lucina’s grip to tighten, for her to hold Severa by the roots of her hair and make use of her willing mouth.

“Ah, h-hey.”

All the hardness in Lucina’s bearing gave way to open concern; her hand fell away to one of Severa’s shoulders, and Severa hoped that maybe she’d spontaneously combust before digging herself a deeper hole.

“I was thinking, that. I kinda wanted to try something.”

There was no backing out now, unless she could think of a (mundane) lie on the quick, like, _I’m really into foot massages,_ which wasn’t too far from the truth anyway.

“I thought, maybe, you could… hold me down.” She refused to meet Lucina’s eyes, unfocusedly gazing into her bare chest. “Like, by the wrists. Or the…” She trailed off. In the corner of her eye, she saw Lucina’s face light with, if not recognition, an acknowledgment that Severa had totally just said that.

“You would like that?” Lucina took both of Severa’s hands into her own, drawing them into her lap; Severa nodded mutely.

“Yeah, I… I mean—”

“Very well.” Lucina’s smile was a small reassurance, and Severa figured it might not have been _too_ extraordinary a request, though it wasn’t quite the full truth either. Lucina guided her down with agonizing gentleness, as if suddenly unsure of her motions as Severa. She held Severa’s arms outstretched, spread at shoulder’s width, while straddling her waist.

“Like this?”

“Y-yeah.” With a twinge of panic, she realized that Lucina was awaiting further instruction, standing by while shirtless, crouched over her body, studying her face. “Uh, then you sort of… do what you will to me.”

“But what would you like?”

None of her mirror rehearsals had anticipated this line of questioning. Lucina’s eyes were so searching and earnest that Severa couldn’t deny her a straight answer, as obvious as it seemed to her.

Severa stopped herself as soon as the expletive formed on her lips, and said instead, “I want you to… touch m-mmph!”

The force of the kiss sank her head into the mattress until she pushed back against it, fingers flexing over empty air as Lucina pinned her in place. Her hips moved on their own accord, and Lucina’s chuckle was a hot breath against her ear as she moved to attend that need. She released one of Severa’s wrists and began to move downwards, before halting in place—Severa opened her eyes to find Lucina lost in thought.

“Wait,” she started, leaning forward to arrange Severa’s arms overhead, taking both in one hand. A distant, questionably rational part of Severa reminded her that there were better ways to go about this, that the leggings from earlier could even substitute for rope or cuffs, but she stayed her tongue. Lucina’s free hand found her jawline while the hard ridge of her knee pressed into Severa’s groin, with enough pressure to slick the thin fabric of her shift that separated Lucina from bare flesh.  She struggled under Lucina’s grip out of a reflexive urge to take care of the need herself, and gasped as her arms were forced back against the mattress. Lucina froze, though her grip held fast.

“… Was that alright?”

Severa nodded mutely, for fear of embarrassing herself with another undignified yelp.

“And this,” Lucina continued, and her voice dropped a shade darker as her knee rolled experimentally. “This is alright?”

Lost for words, Severa answered instead with an urgent nod, hooking a leg around the small of Lucina’s back and drawing her close.

“I need this,” she gasped, taken aback by her own melodrama. Lucina’s free hand roamed an erratic pattern beneath the front of her shift, hitching Severa close by the hip, and then settling on a breast stretched unusually taut by her raised arms. When it proved too little, Severa dug her heels into the mattress and drove against her, riding Lucina’s knee at her own frantic pace. The tawdriness of the imagery did not escape her, though it thankfully occurred to her only after bringing herself to climax—that she’d essentially played the part of an excited dog. And that she wasn’t a very well-trained one. A flood of guilt and lingering arousal struck her when Lucina removed her own hand from her waistband, having taken care of herself, but she guessed neither of them could be faulted for overeagerness.

“Sorry… I guess I got carried away.”

“You were incredible.” The hand that had been holding her wrists moved to stroke her cheek, before Lucina sat up to douse the candle.

“I was a selfish brat.”

“So be it, if you’ll let me spoil you.”

Tempted as she was to tell Lucina to change out of her breeches—or recover the fallen silverware she’d unceremoniously swept off the bed—she was too spent to do much else but roll onto her side and wriggle close to Lucina’s bare chest. Grateful for the shroud of darkness, she reached for the shape of Lucina’s shoulder, and mumbled, “Sorry about all of that.”

“Hm?”

She wondered if Lucina hadn’t fallen half-asleep anyway by now, or if she could reasonably pass this discussion off as a dream in case things went south.

“For being a huge weirdo. I mean, that was—”

“Severa.”

The covers rustled with Lucina’s movements, sitting up where a meaningful look wouldn’t suffice in the dark. Lucina’s warm hand enveloped hers.

“I’m holding you to your promise to treat yourself with a bit more kindness. And,” she said, “if there’s anything that makes you happy, then I would hear it. No matter how outlandish it may seem to you, I… cherish these opportunities to discover more about each other.”

An affectionate sort of quiet settled over them, filled only by the rustle of Lucina stroking Severa’s hair with the back of her hand. After a minute, Severa wondered if she ought to pretend to have fallen asleep herself.

“…Have you read _The Bygnonian Bawd_?” she asked instead, while every shred of common sense in her body resisted.

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar.”

“Good. It’s absolute drivel, and it’s all I read while you were gone.”

“I see.”

Lucina fell silent, undoubtedly waiting for an explanation.

“Uh, well, it got me thinking, miraculously.” She paused to put her next words in order, and also to give their new benevolent goddess an in to shut her up with a well-timed indoor lightning bolt. “There was some stuff in there that got me thinking, 'hey, maybe we could try this out.’ If you wanted.”

Lucina’s tone was questioning, but not judgmental.

“I’m not sure I catch your meaning. What was the book about?”

“Seriously? _The Bygnonian Bawd_?” Severa would have burrowed her face in her hands, but Lucina’s served as a suitable alternative.

“It’s smut, you dolt,” she mumbled into Lucina’s callused palm. “I’m talking about… you know. Stuff in bed.”

There was a moment where Severa half-expected the pulse in Lucina’s hand to quicken, like such a gaudy revelation would leave her more shaken than a dark dragon god’s apocalypse.

Instead, she said, “Ah, I understand, now.” And then, chuckling, the skin of her hand cool against Severa’s heated cheek, “That’s no cause for shame. We are lovers, after all, and before that, we are friends. And I value forthrightness, in friends and in my fiancee.”

A thrill of guilt fluttered in Severa’s gut—it was true that they’d kept no secrets up until this point, but she also supposed this wasn’t much of a secret, if she couldn’t even wait a day before opening her fat mouth.

“You don’t get it. Some of the stuff is a little… out there. And I guess I didn’t want you to feel like you weren’t perfect already,” Severa admitted. “Gods know I’m not. If anything, I’m just the wor—”

She gasped through her nose when Lucina silenced the rest of her self-flagellating prattle with her lips, as had become one of her habits—regardless of whoever was present to witness it.

She pressed her cheek to Severa’s and said, “That you’ve entrusted this to me means more than you could know.” A kiss to her temple. “And I intend to honor that trust.”

“Y-yeah, well…” Severa turned her face away. “Maybe when I’m not so spent. Do you mind moving? You’re kinda crushing my stomach.”

“Ah, my apologies.” Lucina rolled off her chest, likely erring on the side of caution with the berth she gave Severa.

“Ugh, not _that_ far! Here.” Affecting her best fondly-weary sigh, she pulled Lucina’s arm around her front, nestling back into her chest. Another chuckle, this time at the back of her neck.

“Of course. How careless of me.”

“Goodnight, Lucina! That means stop talking!”

“I love you too,” chuckled Lucina.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's part one; part two will be posted likely sometime next week, barring, say, a horrible accident. (This is not an invitation to rig my car with explosives!!!)


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [(Tumblr link)](http://orgyland.tumblr.com/post/151957051169/harlequinade-part-two)
> 
>  
> 
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> 
> Bad news: my car was never rigged with explosives. What the fuck guys.  
> Worse news: SO Now this exists.

Eyes shut, head bowed, Severa tested the bonds locking her wrists together. As the belt's leather embossing skimmed against her lower back, she considered their options. 

A length of rope she'd filched from the stables could hold a knot, but their small triumph fell to panic at Severa's first thoughtless mention of rope-burn, and Lucina had drawn from between the headboard and mattress a curved, burnished dagger to cut her bonds then and there. **  
**

_(“You sleep with a dagger?”)_

_(“I sleep with my bodyguard. The dagger is a keepsake.”)_

After making a mock-indignant production of Severa storming out of the bedroom, they tried kitchen twine. Slim and fibrous, it bit pale tracks into the flesh of Severa's forearms, and this was eventually thrown aside as well.

So all considered, settling on the belt was the best outcome for everyone but gossiping kitchen staff whose livelihoods rested with their Exalt's infinite charity if they had the time to stand around and gawk like a brood of braindead hens. (Severa managed to keep all this to herself, as she and Lucina had spoken at length about her temper.)

Severa couldn't fault her books—the girls' books she'd confiscated, that is—for sparing the logistical details. Working unseen behind her, Lucina massaged circles into one of Severa's palms with the pad of her thumb. In front of her, the corners of the chamber were flushed red with firelight and evening sun, their bedspread's gleaming fibers pooling like silk around the skin of her knees.

Her nose also started itching. Thank the gods, because for a moment there things were almost perfect.

“Er, Severa?”

“Sorry, what was that?” Severa broke from her reverie, suddenly thankful to have been turned away.

“Oh, I… only meant to ask if this was finding you any better. It may not be what you had in mind.”

This charade of Lucina's—the one where Severa wasn't laughed out of the bedroom and into a convent—was looking more and more like the greater torture than whatever she had in store for the night. Severa forced a smirk and, in a feeble gesture of comfort, mimed a feebler attempt to escape her bonds.

“Since you asked so nicely, I'll have you know… if this is the worst the Ylisseans have to offer, then you're not getting a peep out of me.”

There was a low chuckle, and what felt like Lucina shifting her weight behind her, and she felt the shape of Lucina's face press against the curve of her back. A moist breath seeped through the cloth of Severa's shift, heating the flesh of her shoulderblade, and then the outside of her bicep, and then the side of her neck.

“If that was a challenge, then I accept,” Lucina said at last. Severa's head rolled aside, baring her throat like a common slattern, and she could feel her own pulse quickening under the lips pressed against it. She could stay trapped here until they sent out a search party, powerless and spellbound to her captor's passions, hanging without complaint on Lucina's every motion. A slow warmth uncurled in her belly, spread and made sensitive every nerve on her skin, with a burning sated by only Lucina's touch. This would be the part where Severa's hand, unbidden, would wander to her own breast or thigh, but her bonds checked that impulse; she lit with thrill and shame at the prospect of begging for it.

“This is what you like?”

Her fingers stroked a blazing path down Severa's arm, and then her waist, like a butcher sizing up a pig, and that was definitely in competition for the weirdest thing to think about when her fiancee was about to have her way with her.

“Severa?”

Her voice firmed—it sounded something like the kind she'd use with visitors at court, level and vaguely paternalistic. And then, though Severa's back was turned to her, she heard the faintest hint of a smile.

“If you like this, then I'd hear it.”

Already this was torture, and Severa hadn't even been struck. Her groin twinged a little pathetically at her own answer: “Y-yeah. I do.”

“You do what?”

The hands around her sides came away.

“I like it,” she said hastily, in hopes it would appease whatever vengeful yet sensual trickster god she'd awakened within Lucina.

“What do you like?”

Gods, this was worse than asking Laurent for a straight answer to an arithmetic problem.

“I like it when...” She swallowed, painfully aware of the bob of her own throat. “I like it when you, tie me up...”

“That's all there is?”

“N-no.” Forgetting her dignity, Severa inched back against Lucina's hands, seeking any touch beyond the heel of her own foot against her groin. “I like it when you touch me, a-and...”

Her efforts were rewarded with a squeeze of her rear, rougher, hungrier than the kind of fondling she'd grown accustomed to. She gasped and her back arched on its own accord.

“And... that, and...”

“And what else?”

The answer came before Severa was aware of saying it, her voice strained into a whine.

“And I want you to hit me,” she breathed, and so caught in the moment, she mustered the bravery to look over her shoulder for the first time. A wondering sort of resolve gleamed in Lucina's eyes, lips distractedly parted.

A finger traced the ridge of Severa's tailbone, and Lucina said, “Here?”

Nodding wordlessly, Severa turned forward and squeezed her eyes shut; the book had made this sound so dumb, but she lowered her chest against the mattress, presenting herself like a bitch in heat, and for all she knew that's what she was.

Lucina's voice betrayed the slightest tremor. “Very well,” she said, and her palm came down on Severa's flank, and though it barely stung, its sound reverberated off cold chamber walls loud enough to send her into a brief panic, like the earlier clatter of their plateware. Severa curved her back tighter than she thought possible, choking a “harder” into the sheets.

Though thin, the fabric of her leggings proved an annoying obstruction, and no amount of her ineffective twisting would work them off. She soon stopped when the next slap came, hard enough for Severa to cry out in surprise, cracked and desperate, while her remaining shred of sanity flooded her cheeks with hot shame. “Please...”

“'Please' what, Severa?”

The sound of her own name, rough and leaden on her fiancee's tongue, left Severa short of breath.

“P-please keep going. And… keep talking,” she finally managed. Another gasp as fingers curled around her waistband, rolling her leggings down to just above her knees, and then a third slap. Cold air met the skin of her flank, the inside of her thighs, the moisture of her cunt, and she wondered how it would feel to be struck there when Lucina spoke again.

“What ought I talk about?” She listed a finger down the cleft of Severa's backside, muscles twitching beneath her touch.

“I-I don't know!” Severa sputtered, burying her face in the mattress and muffling her next words. “Just, think of something—call me names—anything—“

The next slap forced the words from her throat. A heat lingered there, trembling and oversensitive, and her cry was alien as Lucina brushed her lips against the spot, kissing a line down the curve of her thigh.

“Is that good?” She planted a kiss to the underside of her leg, and then pulled away to deliver another blow. Severa nodded with a wordless whimper. Hot breath plumed against her skin, quivering with Lucina's well-disguised eagerness. That just the sight of her would get Lucina worked up was gratifying in the basest of ways, and Severa was prepared to voice her pleasure, when Lucina spoke again:

“D-do you like this, you… mediocre… dunce?”

The moment collapsed into a distant procession of observations, cold and detached: Severa was laid face-flat, ass in the air, previously debilitated with arousal, before Lucina had leveled a (to be honest, completely fair) charge to her backside.

Severa craned her head to look at her from one side of her face, the other buried gracelessly in the mattress. “Er… what?”

“Ah, sorry!” She watched Lucina straighten from her crouch. “It—I haven't the faintest where that came from. Those were… horrid words for me to use!”

“No, I mean...” Severa rolled onto her back to better see her, painfully aware of how she must have looked like a trussed up chicken at a banquet. “It wasn't even hurtful, just. Weird.”

“Yes, I know.” Lucina had never been especially prone to blush, but this was, as far as Severa knew, the reddest she'd ever seen her.

“I… suppose you'd like for me to untie you,” Lucina said at length, breathless and deflated.

“Maybe, yeah.”

One second dragged to the next in an all-consuming silence as Lucina worked apart the knot of the belt. Severa was about to massage the bloodflow back herself when Lucina took a hand in her own, planting an apologetic kiss on the inside of one of her wrists.

“I feel as though I've betrayed your trust,” she said, and seeing as Severa's stupid mouth had gotten them into this mess, she turned to pull Lucina into an embrace instead, burying her face in the crook of Lucina's neck.

“You were fine,” she said. “I should've been more clear. And maybe less of a freak.”

“I think you underestimate how much I enjoyed myself—perhaps too much. I fear my good sense had abandoned me.”

She paused with a beat of rare hesitation.

“You've been gifted with one of the sharpest minds this land has ever known.”

“I know that! I mean, I disagree,” Severa said, “But I know you think that! The point is the insult isn't real. It's… gods, I'm going to hate myself for even using the word, but it's roleplay.”

Lucina nodded.

“I understand that much, but I'm afraid we'll need to compromise on this matter. I couldn't bring myself to do you injury, even in jest.”

Severa met her eyes, warm and softened.

“I'd even venture,” Lucina continued, “that your modesty puts you less at ease with praise than with scorn.”

“Wait, what are you saying? What modesty?”

“That is precisely my point,” said Lucina. “And as long as we are being frank with one another, I cannot deny that I find it… gratifying, for entirely selfish reasons.”

It was a fairly innocuous admission, but Severa's face lit with heat all the same.

“Okay, so embarrassing me does it for you. Gotcha.”

“If you take no pleasure in it, then neither do I.”

Gods, she couldn't have known how awkward a position this put her in, but Severa pushed gamely on ahead.

“… I never said I didn't,” she mumbled quickly under her breath, before continuing, “but alright, that's good to know. And, uh, the...”

She felt her flush darken.

“The...”

“The striking, you mean,” Lucina supplied, when Severa sort of wished she wouldn't.

“Yeah. That. How do you… uh...”

“As I said before.” Her brand caught a gleam of window light, and as little as Severa wanted to hold her gaze just then, she couldn't help but be mesmerized by the iridescence. “If it pleases you, then… well, I suppose...”

Lucina cast down to the sheets, bunching the fabric in one hand like a fidgeting child tearing grass from its roots.

“It was… nice, in a way, to see you so unreserved. And to know that I had a hand in it...”

Her hand went to Severa's, resting loosely as in apology for her earlier bonds.

“If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to try it once more. And…”

At the sight of Lucina so bashful, the rueful laughter bubbled up before Severa could stop herself. She brought Lucina's hand to her lips and shook her head.

“Gods… I was so worried, and it turns out to be all for nothing.”

* * *

 

It so happened, however, that Severa had every reason to be worried.

“For a man of science, the pursuit of knowledge is of inestimable value unto itself,” Laurent began. “Curiosity—my yearning to know more about our natural world and those that inhabit it—drives me for its own sake. And yet...”

He sighed, adjusting his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. Severa made herself small in her chair cushion, for once feeling actual dread in anticipation of one of her friend's lectures, rather than the usual impatience.

“I find myself,” he started, “almost grateful of my ignorance, for the first time in my life, when my Exalt, sworn liege, and cherished friend, came to me with a most peculiar question.”

“Oh Gods...” Severa buried her face in her hands, and then chanced a peek at the tea table between two fingers. “Please tell me that tea's poisoned.”

“You misunderstand me.” Laurent's face softened. “I'm not here to pass judgment on any less than conventional proclivities you may have. I've no room to speak, after all.”

“Oh GODS, Laurent! Too much information!”

Laurent nodded gravely.

“I'm afraid we've ceded such boundaries the moment your fiancee decided to ask after me for 'more humane methods of a prisoner's restraint.' Our dungeons have been vacant since Exalt Emmeryn's enthronement.”

“There is NO WAY I'm having this conversation with you!”

“Lucina is, again, my sworn liege, and as her future consort, so are you. And as royal advisor, I cannot in good conscience stand idle as my lieges fall prey to unsafe practices.”

He gave a meaningful look over his spectacles.

“Kitchen staff talk, you know.”

“Okay, but it's not like we actually ended up using the—wait, no! We're not talking about this! Argh!”

She groaned into her throw pillow, which at least hid her face better than her hands.

“Forgive me, my friend. For talk we shall.” From his high advisor's gown he produced a sheaf of parchment, propping them over his crossed leg.

“I've developed a theory around my years of personal observation. I hypothesized that, perhaps, that the chaos of battle nurtured a deep appreciation for order. Sense, control, stability—we sought it then, and even now the yearning lingers.”

“Are those notes?!”

“I wasn't satisfied with the explanation, however. I believe that the onus of power has a hand in these strivings. My thoughts turned to the elegant design of the water gate.” With his quill, he scratched out a crude depiction of a reservoir, reminiscent of a child's scrawlings.

“That's a great… tree, Laurent.”

“This is a raincloud,” he corrected, only mildly affronted. “It represents the burden of responsibility that, to a given extent, rests on all our shoulders.”

Within the cloud, he scribbled a label.

“Gods, what language is that in? How is your penmanship so terrible?!”

“Force of habit—I'd long ago adopted my mother's shorthand. The reservoir is then the rational mind, and the rising water level the necessary tension it accumulates. Two paths stand before us.”

With a few decisive sweeps of the quill, he sketched the discharge from the watergate.

“We may make use of the 'release valve' and thereby 'take the reins' of our mental stress—”

“We mix our metaphors, okay—”

“… Or we allow it to overflow, and the darkness controls us.”

Tight loops of ink closed around the figure until there was nothing else.

“That's...” Severa pressed her thumbnail to her teeth before she could stop herself. “That's surprisingly similar to what Noire told me.”

For how composed Laurent had seen through this whole conversation, she didn't expect him to splutter over his tea at this.

“I—pardon, Noire spoke with you on this matter? What did she say, if I may ask?”

“Huh? I mean, she...”

The significance behind Laurent's sudden anxiousness then struck her. She felt her face contort as if she'd just downed a poultice mixed with stomach acid.

“I… GODS, I don't want to know about this! Good for you two, but I cannot conceive of a world where I would ever need or want this information!”

“Nor can I! That's why I asked!” Laurent hurriedly shuffled his papers into a neat pile before folding them beneath his arm, apparently ready to show himself out. “Severa, the thrust of my message is that you needn't allow fear or shame to take hold, and that knowledge is our greatest asset in a world of disarray. And—”

“Discussion over, Laurent! Get thee hence! Out!”

She considered throwing the pillow after him for good measure, but it would have bounced ineffectually off a closed door, as Laurent made an exit as swift as his stupid wind magic. Instead she brought it up to her face, heaving a long, tired sigh.

* * *

 

Fate, circumstances, and Severa's debilitating anxiety would keep them apart for the remainder of the week. Most nights, one or the other—usually Lucina—would be too exhausted to carry on their game, and it hadn't occurred to Severa to reserve a date for it. She busied herself instead with all of the chores of a captain of the pegasus guard, and none of the perks.

“Hey. Misha.” Severa laid a conspiratorial palm flat against her pegasus's neck, leaning close. “You know that whole thing about… how pegasus only let maidens who're pure of heart ride you. What's that about?”

Misha flicked away a descending fly with her ear. Gods, horses were so dumb.

“I feel like you're the only one I can talk to. Repentance is really tricky when you knew your god personally, I guess?” Two pats at the beast's side signaled it to open its wing; Severa needed a stool to reach it with her brush, and the feather dust irritated her eyes and nose. She swept with long, firm strokes down the grain of her wing.

“It'd be one thing if Naga was this lofty, mysterious figure who's kind of. Above it all,” she said. “And, like, I wouldn't have to picture Lady Tiki as a captive audience to all of... this.”

She stepped down, and Misha craned her neck and weird horse face to fix Severa with one of her weird horse eyes. Severa hadn't really noticed, until she started riding, herself, that they had the vertical pupil slits, like sheep and goats. It was incredibly creepy. Misha had no right judging anyone for any bedroom activities. All the same, Severa was getting on the damn pegasus.

“Don't judge me for this, okay?!” she said, swinging one leg over Misha's back. So far, so good. Misha showed no sign of protest as Severa settled on top of her; it looked like Severa was in the clear, or else the rules of who can ride a pegasus weren't clearly established. How would they sort a pervert out, anyway? Would Misha just buck her off?

“Okay,” said Severa, aloud, to herself, alone in the stables. “We're good so far. Wherever you draw the damn line, I'm not there yet.”

“M-milady.”

Severa hadn't heard the trainee enter the stables, but there she stood. Severa was then struck by the sickening realization that the girl might have been listening this whole time, too polite or too intimidated to question her superior.

“Captain,” Severa corrected warily.

“I mean, captain!” The girl unconsciously straightened her stance. “I've been ordered to relieve you.”

Severa blinked.

“By _who_?” she demanded. “Your commander's out on patrol, and I sure as hell didn't summon you.”

“The Exalt, Captain Severa. Her Grace has fallen ill.”

The curse under her breath came out of reflex, and Severa swung off the mount, landing gracelessly on the other side of the stool.

“Just,” she stammered, halting as she passed the trainee. “You didn't see any of that.”

The girl's eyes lit, as if her captain had just sworn her to urgent secrecy.

“I haven't the faintest what you mean, Captain.”

A smirk tugged at Severa's lips. At least she'd raised some of them right.

* * *

 

She found Lucina not in their chambers, but leaned against the railing of their balcony, gazing into the night sky. Indignation flared in every inch of Severa and just as quickly dissolved, caught up in the sight of her: the slope of her shoulders, broad and bare to the night; the curve of her back caught in pale half-light and the hidden scars that flexed beneath her shift with every breath. Lucina turned at her approach, and all Severa could only manage an affectionate “Idiot.”

To make her point, she drew close for a kiss, and then stopped just short. Her index finger pressed against Lucina's half-parted lips.

“Go to bed.” She rolled up on the balls of her feet, planting a kiss on Lucina's forehead. “I'll figure out if I wanna tempt fate by then.”

Lucina's smile was wry, and a little apologetic.

“I wish I had your good sense to abstain.” Her voice thick and husky, Lucina's condition was unmistakable; it struck Severa as not-unappealing, almost as not-unappealing as swan diving off the balcony at that thought.

She said instead, “You can't hog _all_ the blame, I guess,” before motioning Lucina away from the railing. Together they crossed over the cold marble floors of the Exalt's bedchambers, leaving the curtains parted to the warm, humid night.

“Blame... Brady. Yeah.”

“Our dear friend's reign of destruction has gone too long unchecked,” agreed Lucina. Her smile fell with a weary sigh.

“To think,” she said, “I'd even set aside plans for the night.”

Dropping her undershirt into a heap at her feet, Severa paused to consider the words.

“Plans?”

“After a fashion, yes.” Lucina had lit a candle before taking her seat on the bed, staring wistfully into its flame. “But it's foolish.”

Severa wondered if she'd undressed too hastily. She stepped out of her breeches, arms crossed with the capricious modesty that so often found her at the end of Lucina's gaze, and said, “Well, what is it?”

Lucina's eyes fell to her knees, drawn up close to her chest.

“Ugh, come on. I'm curious now.”

“I know,” said Lucina, before adding, a bit miserably, “And I know that I've sealed my fate in mentioning it.”

She gestured with a nod to the floor.

“Underneath the bed. There's a box.”  


“That's a good girl.” Her modesty forgotten, Severa made her approach in nothing but her smalls, treating Lucina to a condescending pat on the head.

“You're enjoying this far too much.”

“Shhh, you just rest that pretty voice.”

Kneeling by the bedside, Severa's hand met with the cool wood of an unlocked box. She pulled it out, shooting a glance at Lucina for any tell, but her expression was impenetrable.

“You didn't have to get me anything, you know.” She grinned, unlatching the lid of the chest. “It's not even my birthd—oh. OH. Um, wow. Okay.”

Even in the low light, the shape was unmistakable. Long, curved, dark, and encased in velvet, this was definitely a phallus.

“I confess,” Lucina chuckled, “Your reaction has made the whole ordeal worthwhile.”

“D-don't try and turn this around on me!” Severa felt her face burn hot. “Where do you even get this kind of thing? Why is it in a _fancy case_?!”

“There are channels,” was all Lucina said. A pensive beat. “I had planned to retrieve it under more… agreeable circumstances. Let this be a lesson for both of us, I suppose.”

Severa ignored her, taking the piece from its case. Firm and cold to the touch, it seemed to be of leather make. She was loath to acknowledge the twinge of intrigue that followed; she wondered if Lucina, despite her present condition, felt the same.

“Well, uh.” Severa turned her face away. “It's not like you'd be… you're not...”

Seeming to catch her meaning, Lucina said, “I'm not the most provocative sight to behold, no.”

“Ugh, not _that_. I mean. I wouldn't think you'd be up for it.”

The earlier modesty returned full-force; the heat of Lucina's gaze burned into her bare, chilled skin.

“If you're not,” Lucina began, with a dry swallow. “… opposed. Then neither am I.”

For a while, neither of them spoke.

“Y-you're doing it again,” mumbled Severa. “I mean, you're turning it on me. Why don't you tell me what you'd like?”

It stood to reason, with how much of a brat she'd been. When had Lucina the time to think of anything but Severa's unreasonable demands?

Before she could press Lucina any further, she acquiesced.

“Very well,” she said. “First, I'd like to see you off the cold floor.”

Rolling her eyes conspicuously, Severa rose to her feet while Lucina made room at the end of the bed. When Severa leaned down to kiss her, a finger stayed her lips.

“… Listen,” Severa warned.

“Forgive me, but I couldn't stand to see you falling ill again on my account.”

“It's not like I'll get it again! I mean, right? That's how it works?”

Lucina chuckled, pressing her lips against the curve of Severa's shoulder.

“It was implied that you'd humor me tonight,” she said, before guiding Severa onto her lap with a soft tug. Severa straddled her, shuddering as Lucina's hand moved flat down the side of her ribcage, settling her thumb into the divot of her hip. Severa's groin thrilled at the pressure, and she widened her stance. A finger hooked down the front of her smalls.

“My pretty kitten,” Lucina recited, earning a smack on her knuckles.

“Do not _ever_ mention that book to me again.”

“My Severa,” Lucina then amended,  warm and unguarded. Like the slow-crumbling walls of clotted sand, Severa's restraint gave way to tenderness, and she leaned down to brush her lips against the heated skin of Lucina's temple.

“That's better,” Severa whispered. Arms crept over the curve of her back, and Lucina urged she climb up, pressing with her lips against her breastbone, and then her stomach, and finally the front of her smallclothes. Severa mounted her face without ceremony. Clenching the sheets, she pitched forward over Lucina's searching mouth, heat and pressure and moisture and suction taking in the cloth and swollen flesh all at once. She bore down, scraping against face and teeth and chin; Lucina had gripped the outside of her legs, pushing against the damp fabric with awakened vigor. Snaking a hand between Lucina's tongue and her groin, Severa pulled her smallclothes to the side to grant her access. Lucina's breath escaped against her skin in a wondering sort of sigh. She pried with a finger, almost languid in her motions, and traced the lip of Severa's cunt.

“I think I know,” Lucina started, halting and thick, “what I'd like to see.”

She moved with surprising nimbleness beneath Severa, withdrawing and leaving nothing but empty air and bedsheets beneath her while Severa held her legs open like a trembling, newborn foal. She didn't need to check behind her to know that Lucina was retrieving the piece, returning with an apologetic kiss to Severa's lower back. Cool leather met the inside of her thigh; she took a shaken breath of tanning musk and scented oil.

They'd spoken before—sometime after Grima's vanquish, when their trysts had settled into habit—of others they'd taken in the past, though Lucina had no such experience, and Severa had only shared the briefest of encounters with a young stablehand in her adolescence. For this reason, she hadn't expected it to return as another question, the appendage's tip drawing lazily up the cleft of her rear.

“Have you ever… erm.”

Lucina let the statement settle, unformed, into the wordless gap between them. A space for Severa, she realized. An advantage to seize.

“Yeah,” she breathed. “Twice, I think. The first time, it hurt a bunch.”

She arched her back, reaching with her two fingers to spread herself, bare and glistening, before Lucina.

“The second time I could only think of you. And… then it wasn't so bad.”

Whetting a refreshed, forceful appetite within Lucina, Severa let herself be caught; she let Lucina pull her upright, kissing her hair, her ear, her neck. She reached behind to stroke Lucina's jaw. The piece glided underneath her, slicking with each pass. The teasing drew out to an agonizing drip, and before long, Severa's demanding streak had begun to reemerge, and she reached down to guide it in herself. A firm hand gripped her wrist; Severa gasped as it was forced against the headboard.

“Both hands,” Lucina said. Severa complied with a whimper as Lucina released her, nudging the end of the piece against Severa's swollen clit. Severa considered the logistics of what they were about to do—she'd be taken against the headboard, which would likely clatter against the wall, which would leave little room for imagination—

The burn of the piece passing her initial resistance, the unpracticed tightness that Lucina slowly coaxed open, banished all discretion. She seethed and lolled her forehead against the headboard.

“I'm fine,” she spat, before Lucina could protest. Though Lucina was quiet, she reached out with a hand to stroke her spine, to slip the cloth straps off her shoulders and free her breasts. Severa felt the skin of Lucina's hand, wrapped around the shaft, come flush against hers, and shuddered from the sight they must have been. She lavished less in the sensation itself than the shadow Lucina cast over her, large and looming and commanding. The hairs on her neck, her arms, the backs of her calves, prickled in the absence of Lucina's touch; the ache between her legs trembled from the memory of Lucina's lips and tongue. She whimpered and drove back against Lucina's grip, urging her into a frenetic rhythm, and felt Lucina leaning close against her back, mouth to her jaw, free hand circling around her stomach to press against her clit—

Violent tremors seized her from her toes to her arms, struggling to hold herself aloft. Taut, drenched, and boneless, a cry broke from her throat, faltering Lucina's short, deliberate lunges. As if all the air had left her body, she leaned into the headboard while the haze subsided. Lucina's thrusts slowed, and then she gingerly withdrew the piece, drawing its length against the outside of Severa's cunt with long, placating strokes. They were each silent for some time, Lucina's breathing unusually labored, until Severa realized what she had done.

“Wow, what is wrong with me? Why'd I let you do that?” She squirmed out from underneath Lucina's limp half-embrace, steadying her by the shoulders. “Ugh, look at you. You can barely keep your head up.”

Lucina responded with breathless laughter, and backed away; Severa winced when she set the piece aside atop their clean, _expensive_ set of sheets.

“I'm to blame for my own indulgence. And I won't apologize; it was well worth it.” Lucina paused, and added, “Though I hope I might soon return the favor.”

Severa slumped down onto the mattress, too exhausted to puzzle over Lucina's definition of a “favor.” A fleeting pang of guilt came and passed as Lucina settled behind her, pulling her into a hot, tacky embrace.

In the quiet that followed, Severa tried to order her words into something gracious or cogent, like putting together one of those colorful box-puzzles from Plegia that Inigo had shown her one day.

_You really do spoil me—_

_You're too good for me—_

_Sometimes I'm afraid I'll wake up, and we'll all be back where we started—_

“If I weren't so exhausted,” Lucina said, “I would suggest a bath… for both our sakes.”

Her words came as hot puffs on the nape of Severa's neck. Letting her eyes drift shut, she flexed into the embrace, drawing the arms close against her front.

“Uh-huh. I love you too.”


End file.
